Dan Wetzel on McCoy and Gilbert last night

Terrific piece. Wetzel is damn good.

 

I think what struck me the most is that as obvious as this column seems, I didn't read any other pieces that took this angle. If anyone spots one, please post a link.

 

This.

 

Wetzel wants us to believe too much, beginning with the lede section...he wants us to believe he was there -- in the locker room with father and son during the game??? .. I'm guessing it was a reconstruction off interviews, which is fine, but be fair with the reader and signal as much...

 

This is a common technique -- recreating the scene with anecdotes, details and observations. It's not to make us to be believe HE was was there; the idea is to make the READER feel like they are there. I thought he did a wonderful job of that.

I personally don't think the piece would be better if he first wrote, "Colt told me that he couldn't throw the ball to his dad seven yards away."

 

I don't personally think it would be "better," either. It just would be more honest, and that's what journalism is supposed to be. I don't give a flying eff if you think it's a "common technique." It's not common among people who respect the craft; misleading the reader is one of the ways this industry has killed itself.

And I'm not talking a clumsy "told me." All Wetzel needed was two words in the first sentence. "Colt McCoy said he...." Then I believe the rest of it is McCoy's story, not Wetzel's eyewitness reporting-- because if it's Wetzel's eyewitness reporting, I want more -- I want him asking how many times the father/coach has come to the locker room during a game, what he thought of his son's throwing, what his advice was, and all that holy Texas father-son jazz...

 

Countless features use that technique. Gary Smith's whole career. It's not like he was really there when that old Yankees catcher killed his brother with a javelin, but the writing put the reader there.

 

Right, Smith did it with Pat Tillman the first time around and we know how that turned out.
I've done it myself a thousand times. And maybe there have been times when I've failed to make it clear that it's someone else's story, not mine -- but those were failures of omission not commission. "Putting the reader there" is no good reason for misleading the reader into thinking the writer saw an event first-hand when what he's doing is recreating a scene as told to him by witnesses remembering it the way they want it remembered. Smith, after all, is only one of many writers burned by such tales.

 

But the Tillman story was wrong because of the information, not the presentation. If he'd quoted Army officials it would have been the same mistakes. If he should have waited longer before writing a column deifying him, that's one thing. But the wrong information didn't have anything to do with the way the story was written.

 

so far down the list of what has killed this industry

 

Wetzel knocked it out of the park. And to answer the question about closed locker rooms, per Mr. Wetzel's Twitter:

 

Tremendous.